


Event Horizon

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Genocide, Omega DLC, Romance, Sexual Content, Slavery, emotionally abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:45:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1967715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2180, Nyreen Kandros loses her way on Omega. Aria T'Loak takes an interest in the young turian hiding on her space station. She offers Nyreen a purpose, an escape from the shame that her biotics have brought her, and an entirely different life than she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> This story was borne out of a peculiar kind of grief. When my mother passed away in early May, I thought that my plans for this big bang had been crushed. We had a complicated relationship, but I still had to put my life on hold to take care of the aftermath. One week later, though, this idea occurred to me while I was playing the Omega DLC. Between driving five hundred miles and helping my father make arrangements, the only thing I had really done for myself was play Mass Effect. I hadn’t felt like doing much of anything else prior to that, but suddenly, I wanted to write again. So I wrote, and this is what came out.
> 
> A thousand thanks to my artist, [laur-rants](http://laur-rants.tumblr.com), who snatched up this story and enthusiastically produced glorious, gorgeous illustrations. [Seriously, just look at them.](http://laur-rants.tumblr.com/post/93302369159/for-todisturbtheuniverses-mebb-story-event) Gosh. This project fell together in the best way because of her; her talent blew me away from the earliest sketches to the finished product. She was so dedicated and so passionate about making art for this fic. I think every writer gets choked up over that, and I'm no exception. There have been a few happy tears. Laur is a fantastic artist and a joy to work with, and I'm happy to have found such a great person to call friend in this fandom.
> 
> Another thousand thanks to my beta, [jkateel](http://jkateel.tumblr.com), who cleaned up the repetitive body language and random tense inconsistencies with utmost patience. Jay is, as always, the editor extraordinaire.

Nyreen's eyes are sunlight—a sweeping beam that never belonged on Omega, a star about to go out.

Aria should be shooting, not running. Aria should be gathering what's left of her strength to sweep away the monsters and Nyreen’s shield both, a quick, crushing fist, leaving Nyreen's almost-sacrifice to stand sheepishly aside. Instead she runs as if through water, and Nyreen looks right through her.

Nyreen's shield doesn't waver—not once. With the adjutants mere steps away, she does not falter.

_Don't_ , Aria thinks—a stupid, sentimental plea—bringing her pistol up too late.

The ground shivers, and Aria slips on burning ash.

* * *

Nyreen dropped out of the rancid cargo bay as soon as the dock cleared.

She kept her hood up, even though the stink lingered. It was deep enough to hide half of her tattoos in the shadows; she didn’t believe that anyone on Omega would recognize her, but she also believed in acceptable risk. She had left the Cabals five years ago, and she had been careful not to resurface. Her family, already laid low by her desertion, would die of shame to know what she had done since.

Bad enough that they had to live with the consequences of her actions. Worse, if she inflicted further suffering upon them. She had lived with herself thus far, but she would not survive that.

She wasn’t the only hooded figure passing through Omega’s docks. She joined the stream of the crowd, fitting herself between scarred thugs and nervous teenagers. No one looked at her, or at one another.

_It’s perfect_ , she thought.

She skirted Afterlife and followed the signs to the markets. Before scouting out her next bolthole, a meal was in order. She’d been squeezed into that cargo hold a little too long; her belly ached.

She found a shadowy nook where she could choke down her cheap nutrient paste and watch those coming and going from the market. They moved through patches of shadow and flickering red light, bartering and arguing and eating, utterly at ease. She wondered how anyone ever made themselves at ease in a place like this. Perhaps the civilians didn’t have the eyes to pick them out, but there were mercenaries everywhere—pacing well-worn paths around the perimeter and through the crowd. Omega was a good place to die for a misstep.

Perhaps the civilians were just used to it—had accepted it, even. If the alternative was a state of constant fear, maybe that was for the best.

She didn’t see a gang tag on any of the mercs, but they were largely turians. Probably Blue Suns—or, worse, Aria’s. She wasn’t sure if there was a distinction, and she wasn’t about to find out. She was here to keep her fringe down—small jobs, unattractive hits, the kind that wouldn’t get her noticed by the pirate queen of Omega.

Getting noticed had never worked out for her.

She worked through the market, avoiding the mercs, and out the other side. Her last hit had yielded enough money for a security deposit, if a place like Omega asked that of its tenants, but she would have to go much deeper into the station to find something she could afford. Real estate near Afterlife went to the highest bidder.

A suspicious salarian took her credits a few hours later, just when a throbbing headache had begun to form behind her eyes. He transferred the encryption key, peered anxiously down the alley, and shuffled away at a furtive pace as Nyreen held her omnitool to the door and unlocked the apartment.

Small. No windows. She would have to do something about the bed; her neck would ache after the first night with only that flat pillow to rest on. She would order her footlocker in from the storage facility and keep it in the apartment. A single pistol seemed inadequate protection for Omega.

It was late, and her head throbbed. She folded the pillow over and tucked it behind her head, dipping into her cowl. When she rested back against the headboard, the bed creaked ominously but held together. She kept her tunic on for warmth and bunched the sheet beneath her lower back to fill the gap. The threadbare quilt she draped over her legs, which she kept bent at the knees. It was not the coldest or most uncomfortable place she’d slept, Nyreen reminded herself, but that did little to ease the lonely ache in gut, the one that always resurged when she landed in a new port.

She coughed out the residue of the asteroid and closed her eyes. She would settle in soon enough. She always did.

* * *

Weeks later, after a dozen silent kills and the steady replenishing of her savings, Nyreen received an invitation to Afterlife.

The message appeared in her omnitool, a blinking light that put her teeth on edge.

_From: Aria T’Loak_

_Subject: Job Opportunity_

_You’re an interesting woman. I’d like to assess your full potential. Stop by Afterlife when you’re ready to stop playing mercenary._

At least it hadn’t been delivered in person. She was on Aria’s radar—she supposed that was inevitable, one way or another—but if the asari hadn’t sent out her thugs, then Nyreen was not a priority yet.

It was an invitation, not a demand. Nyreen could creep deeper, find a more obscure apartment, take fewer contracts. She could survive on less. She was not a threat to Aria; she would prove it.

It would be easier to accept the job. She might even be able to live in relative comfort for once, eat something other than nutrients ground together, buy new clothes, repair her weapons.

For a moment, the prospect of her dim future overwhelmed her. A surge of anger and panic swept through her, waking the biotics long dormant, covering her skin in a film of blue as though to protect her. She breathed in and held it until black spots appeared in her vision, and then slowly let it out as the unauthorized shield died away.

The line between _freelancer_ and _professional_ was one that she could not cross— _would_ not cross. She would not go to Afterlife.

* * *

Aria watched while Nyreen mounted the stairs, half-dragged by her batarian captor. She didn’t rise from her relaxed sprawl on the couch. Her chin tipped up, her head canting to the side, eyes keen on the turian’s face.

Nyreen kept her shoulders square and breathed like she wasn’t shackled. The batarian had deemed the manacles necessary after she knocked out two of his men.

For a moment, Aria gazed up at Nyreen, and Nyreen looked back. The asari’s features were decidedly neutral: mouth set in a firm, even line, eyes steady on Nyreen, but not narrowed or widened. Ultimately, though, that meant nothing to Nyreen, who did not know Aria from any other asari.

"You're a hard turian to track down," Aria said at last.

Nyreen did not reply. She feared what words would emerge if she did.

"Does she speak?" Aria asked, addressing the batarian, though her blue eyes never left Nyreen's.

"Not even when I kicked her," the alien grunted. "I can show you, if—"

"That won't be necessary," Aria interrupted. "Take the handcuffs off."

She rose, a smooth, graceful motion, while the batarian did as asked. Nyreen flexed her fingers and wrists.

"Now," Aria continued, "what are you doing on Omega, little pyjak?"

"What anyone does on Omega," Nyreen said. "Surviving."

Aria scoffed, an inelegant sound from an asari throat. “You aren’t some common freelancer. You’ve been carving a neat little path of murders through the underbelly of this rock, and I want to know why.”

Nyreen shrugged, glancing away. A stripper danced languidly to the right of Aria’s booth, eyes half-closed; she didn’t seem even peripherally aware of the conversation four feet away.

“I assure you, I’m perfectly common,” Nyreen said, watching the dancer.

Aria moved quickly, closing the gap between them with a breath, wrapping a hand around Nyreen’s fringe with another. Within the space of a second, she had yanked the turian down to her eye-level; their faces were inches apart.

[ ](http://laur-rants.tumblr.com/post/93302369159/for-todisturbtheuniverses-mebb-story-event#permalink-notes)

“A perfectly common freelancer doesn’t ignore an invitation from me,” she snapped. Every syllable emerged absolutely crisp from her snarling violet lips.

“Do you think I’m a threat?” Nyreen asked, doing her best to seem uncowed. “I’ve gone out of my way to stay out of _your_ way. If you have as many eyes and ears as they say, you know I’m nothing.”

Aria released her fringe. Nyreen rubbed gently at her carapace, feeling for damage.

“One turian could not threaten this station even if they tried,” Aria dismissed. “Still—I would not be queen of Omega if I didn’t assess every anomaly.”

“If I’ve been assessed to your satisfaction, can I leave?”

Aria folded her arms over her chest. “I do have as many eyes and ears as they say, Nyreen Kandros,” she said. “And I am not satisfied.”

Nyreen stiffened at the sound of her name.

“Talk,” Aria invited.

“I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” Nyreen said, a bubble of panic rising in her chest. Afterlife was too loud for anyone to overhear them, but if Aria knew, then others did, too. “I’m a mercenary. Omega seemed a logical place for someone with my skills.”

“Mmm. Skills that you don’t even use.”

Nyreen heard her own pulse, too fast, too heavy. “I have other skills,” she replied. “I make do.”

“I’ve heard about the Cabals,” Aria mused. Nyreen reminded herself to breathe. “It’s where turians send their biotics, because they don’t trust them. And either they settle down, take less than they deserve for their gifts—”

“It isn’t a gift,” Nyreen interrupted.

Aria tipped her head to the side—inquisitive, but not pitying. "Is that what they told you?" she asked. "Poor thing. So wrapped up in getting free, you didn't even bother to cut the shackles."

Nyreen's fist clenched.

"Ah, ah, ah." Aria reached down to where Nyreen's fingers were bunched together and pulled them apart, one by one. "You already know the one rule on Omega, or you wouldn't have tried so hard to hide from me. Don't ruin it now."

"What do you want?" Nyreen asked. She didn’t care to play the game that Aria seemed to like; only straight questions and answers interested Nyreen, an even playing field that she could navigate. "I've stayed out of your way. As far as I know, I haven't stolen a significant portion of your profit or territory."

"That's what makes you so interesting." Aria's chin tipped up, just slightly, to look Nyreen full in the face. "I can see you won't dance around the subject. I want your talent."

Automatically, Nyreen jerked out of Aria's grasp. "You want me to be one of your hired thugs. Your guard dogs."

Aria's lips twisted up at one corner. The expression suited her—playful, but dangerous. "Nothing so ordinary," she replied. "You would be wasted here." She lowered her voice conspiratorially, so that only Nyreen could hear. "To be honest, they're just for show. I can take care of myself."

Her fingers tightened into a fist. An energy enveloped Nyreen instantly, immobilizing her. It called out to the live wire inside her, and none of Aria's guards noticed that anything had changed; many were not even looking their way.

Aria released her. Nyreen let out a ragged breath.

"Do you know what I do for Omega, Nyreen?" Aria continued, like there had been no interruption.

Nyreen considered carefully before answering. _Sow chaos_ , she might have said, but truthfully, she wasn’t confident enough in her own combat skills to risk pissing Aria off.

"No," she replied finally.

"I ensure freedom," Aria said. "What do you think would happen without me, hmm? One of those ridiculous gangs would plant a flag, declare martial law, extort money and manpower until there was nothing left on this rock. Me, I keep things _balanced_. I keep them in line. This will never be a good place, my dear, but it is at least a _free_ place." She blinked; the purple swoop of her intricate facial markings arched up. "Perhaps that's why you're here, Nyreen."

"I'm here because I have nowhere else to go," Nyreen said. Her voice came out raw.

"Why don't you try me out?" Aria suggested. "See what kind of work I'd like you to do. Nothing permanent. A trial period."

"And if I don't want to stay, when it's over?" Nyreen asked.

"You're talented," Aria dismissed, "but there's always other talent. You want to leave, I won't stop you." Her eyes narrowed. “I won’t sell information about you to the next interested party, either. No point burning bridges.”

Nyreen hesitated, torn between pride long abandoned and curiosity newly discovered. Aria waited, but her gaze drifted to her omnitool as though she had lost interest in their conversation; she would not wait much longer.

"Fine," Nyreen agreed, and felt as though the last of her turian honor slipped away with that single word. "I'll hear you out."

Aria smiled. The swift flash of teeth seemed especially predatory in the garish red light of Afterlife, as though to remind Nyreen who she was dealing with, but the warning fell on deaf ears. Aria possessed an energy all her own, a black hole ensnaring unsuspecting passersby, and Nyreen had crossed the event horizon.

* * *

Nyreen's first assignment was reconnaissance.

"Don't get caught," Aria had warned her. "I'm only sending you. We won't know that they found you until you're already dead."

"I don't get caught," Nyreen had muttered, a little resentfully.

Aria had scoffed. "Except on Kahje. No repeats."

Nyreen wasn't sure how Aria had found out about Kahje. Sure, the asari knew everything that happened on Omega, but did she have eyes and ears across the galaxy, too? Agents watching everywhere?

_Maybe she's the Shadow Broker_ , Nyreen mused, adjusting her pistol in her lap. They certainly seemed to have some personality traits in common.

Unlike Aria, Nyreen hadn't had any luck turning up any evidence that the asari had existed before arriving on Omega. That was a few hundred years ago now. Who she was before becoming the pirate queen of a glorified rock had long since been obliterated—probably exactly how Aria prefered it.

Nyreen banished her curiosity and leaned closer to the grate, hoping that the pair below her would pick up their conversation again soon. Her legs were starting to cramp.

* * *

Dusty and sore and hating herself, Nyreen stood before Aria’s couch and reported the plan of some lower Eclipse mercs to take out their leader and replace him.

"I like Jaroth," Aria mused, eyes scanning the datapad Nyreen had recovered. "For now. I'd rather not have _Elaine_ in charge, that's for sure. She'd be storming Afterlife within a week. Or trying to, anyway." She looked up at Nyreen. "We'll have to get rid of them. I know the docking bay you said they're meeting at."

Nyreen realized Aria’s intention when the asari stood. "You're not coming," she said, disbelieving.

"Why not?" Aria replied, rolling her shoulders as though loosening up. "It's time I saw you in action, and this isn't the hill I'll die on. It's far too small."

"Generally speaking," Nyreen said, not sure why she was even making the effort, "the primarch doesn't march onto the field and paint a target on their back. They're far too important to get shot down on accident."

"This isn't Palaven," Aria replied, "and the people deserve to see their queen." She smiled. "Sometimes."

* * *

Aria was a good shot, and an even better biotic.

The pepper of gunfire never so much as touched her. While Nyreen picked off her targets methodically, one by one, Aria danced through the battlefield. She used her biotics to disarm her opponents and a well-placed round with her submachine gun to finish them. Nyreen watched out of the corner of her eye, fascinated. She had only twice seen asari commandos in action, but Aria certainly fought as if she had trained as one.

Bray hung back with the two other batarians who accompanied them. They joked and lit cigarettes, celebrating a job well done. Aria turned over Elaine's corpse with her boot.

"Nyreen," she called.

Nyreen went, only half-reluctantly. Aria, filmed with the dust of battle and the sweat of exertion, looked more glorious than ever, even standing in the middle of a field of dead bodies. Nyreen hadn't bothered with lust in five years; her first order of business since leaving the Cabals had been survival. But Aria—she was half-disgusted at the resentful admiration she entertained for the asari. She swallowed it down.

"You're a good shot," Aria commented, her eyes on the hole between Elaine's eyes.

"So are you," Nyreen replied. She shifted, a little uneasy at Aria’s attention, and tried not to look at the cutouts in her jumpsuit.

"But you don't use your biotics," Aria continued.

Nyreen swallowed again.

"You're a good shot," Aria repeated, "but you could be better." She glanced sideways, eyes narrowing. "It's nothing to be afraid of, little pyjak. We use the weapons the goddess gives us. There's no shame in that."

Nyreen laughed. It was forced out of her; before that moment, she hadn't imagined that Aria held with religion. "The spirits don't give us weapons," she replied. "They give us examples."

"And whomever doesn't live up to them is left in the cold, hmm?" Aria turned away from the corpse to face Nyreen. "How has that served you so far?"

"I'm alive," Nyreen replied, mandibles drawing tight with irritation.

"What good is living if you don't enjoy it?"

"You have a suggestion." Already, Nyreen’s brief surge of anger had died. Aria’s words reminded her of why she had so deeply loathed the Cabals; it was where turians went to become useless, and to Nyreen, that seemed as good as dying. Hadn’t she left because she wanted more? Why was she still defending a code that had no room for her?

"Let me teach you," Aria invited, eyes steady on Nyreen's face. "Not the bullshit they taught you in the Cabals. Let me show you what a _real_ biotic can be—what _you_ can be."

"Why?" Nyreen asked, folding her arms beneath her cowl. "You're taking quite an interest."

Aria mirrored Nyreen, folding her arms, too. It had the side effect of pushing up her breasts. Nyreen kept her eyes fixed on Aria’s face. Spirits—she had not been a gawping rookie in nearly a decade, and she had _never_ had a fetish for soft, squishy asari. _Act like it_ , she reprimanded herself.

If Aria noticed, she didn't let on. "I see your potential," she said. "I don't want to waste it. Besides, have I steered you wrong yet?"

She hadn't. Aria was shrewd, but she was also brave, protecting threats to Omega with her own personal talents—for after the reconnaissance Nyreen had done, the turian was convinced that Elaine would indeed have done exactly as Aria said. There were volatile groups on this space station, and Aria was the only thing between _moral bankruptcy_ and _outright slaughter_. It was still dirty work, but it wasn't just credits; it was protecting the lowest of the low, however scant that protection might be.

"Fine," Nyreen said, letting go of her misgivings for the moment. She could always back out later.

"Good," Aria replied. She reached out, took Nyreen's hand, turned it palm-up. Nyreen, too confused to pull away, attempted to jerk out of Aria's grasp only when the asari activated her omnitool. "Relax," Aria said, keying something in. "Take the credits—you've earned it. And get yourself a better apartment, would you? Life's too short to live in caves."

* * *

Nyreen's lessons started a week later, when Aria invited her to Afterlife in the middle of the night.

Felt like it was always night on Omega, really. Time didn't have any particular meaning here. It wasn't like Palaven or any other planet; it was a space station, so it was awake when it wanted to be awake, asleep when it wanted to be asleep. But it always felt like it was going on two in the morning, like the seedier wards on the Citadel that never shut down, and Afterlife was rarely still as a result.

Aria led Nyreen down through the lower rooms of the club. Every variety of creature present called out a greeting. Some started toward them, but there were guards to hold them back. Aria rarely acknowledged them. Even more shrank back into the shadows as she passed, as though they feared that her gaze would fall on them, but they needn’t have worried, Nyreen thought. Aria took care not to look anyone but her trusted guards in the face.

They reached a panel in a silent room. Aria keyed something into her omnitool, and the way opened before them: a dark tunnel, a pinprick of light in the distance.

As the panel closed behind them, Aria sighed, rolling her head onto one shoulder and then the other. Some tension seemed to go out of the way she held herself. Nyreen, in contrast, had never been more alert.

"What a headache," Aria muttered, waving them forward. "I've got to convince the dancers they'd be just fine with different music. This current shit is giving me a headache."

"Surely that's more about the volume," Nyreen put forth tentatively.

"No, smartass," Aria replied, but she said it with a smirk. "Regardless, though, no one could learn to be a biotic in those conditions. We need somewhere quieter."

The room they arrived at was too soft by far for a woman like Aria; the light was dim, a faint ivory, and the floor gave beneath Nyreen's feet. Aria toed off her high-heeled boots and sank to the floor, cross-legged.

"Sit," she ordered.

Nyreen did her best, trying to make herself comfortable on the soft ground.

"All right," Aria said, with a smirk that had become uncomfortably familiar. "Show me what you know."

Nyreen hadn't purposefully brushed the well of power inside her for years. She had only kindled it by mistake—a violent gust of wind catching a flame and dragging it up whenever she was too angry or frightened to maintain control. Slowly, carefully, she unraveled a tendril of her diminished reserves and built a thin shield around her, neat but fragile. She knew that a few hard shots would destroy it.

"You haven't practiced at all since you left the Cabals," Aria noted, watching the shield with a critical eye.

The shield flickered and died, lost as soon as Nyreen broke focus. "I didn't need to," she replied.

Aria rolled her eyes. Nyreen felt a tug, the brush of something alive and awful, and then she _flew_ , tossed through the air to land face down ten feet away in a clumsy heap.

She took several deep breaths before bracing her arms beneath her and collecting herself. Aria, wrists balanced on her knees, sat within a perfect thick orb of biotic protection; the force of its creation had been enough to throw Nyreen like a small child.

"You don't think this would be useful?" Aria raised her arms, turning her palms outward, and the bubble expanded. She made it look effortless. "Middle of a battle, you need a break from running, but there's no cover—wouldn't it be nice to seal the world out, take a breath, regain your focus?"

"Non-biotics live without it," Nyreen pointed out, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet.

"But we don't have to," Aria replied, each word sharp. "Try again."

* * *

Aria put Nyreen’s developed skills to use while honing the talents she had neglected. It had been years since Nyreen had such steady employment—since leaving the Cabals, in fact. She found herself appreciating Aria’s stability and always regretted it the next instant, or found reason to find fault in the asari while she was folded into some dank tunnel eavesdropping on one unsavory individual or another. Inevitably, she always reported in dusty and sweaty, low on patience, but Aria never seemed to mind Nyreen’s terseness.

"Snipers,” Nyreen said, a little out of breath from running, “here and here.” She pointed out the patches of color on the live vid where the vorcha were hiding. “They're expecting someone right down this alley, and they don’t plan to let them past the doors."

"Mmm." Aria seemed unimpressed. "We'll see how this plays out."

"We should stop them," Nyreen suggested. She stood naturally at parade rest; she wondered what it said about her that her body had accepted Aria as her ranking officer.

"You left the trap," Aria replied. "Our endangered individual will be protected, the mercs taken by surprise." Her eyes narrowed. "Vorcha. Those little scavengers. What could they be planning?"

"We could use them," Nyreen said, forcing her tone to polite indifference. "Your mines are understaffed. They wouldn't be so busy wrecking havoc if—"

"And let them get their little claws all over my equipment?" Aria snapped, pushing back from the display. "No. They're worthless, Nyreen."

Nyreen's own claws tightened against her palms, but she said nothing. If there was one thing she’d learned in the Cabals, it was when to recognize that a battle was lost.

Bray nodded to the vid. There was movement at the end of the hallway—two salarians lugging a crate between them, one muttering under his breath.

"Now what are _they_ up to?" Aria muttered, leaning closer.

"Red sand, probably," Bray grunted. "Not a scheduled shipment. Trying to go around your fees, boss. Blood Pack must be trying to cut a better profit."

Aria tutted under her breath, shaking her head. “They never learn,” she murmured.

On screen, the trap activated. The salarians, frozen and protected within the field, looked around wildly; the vorcha shot from their perches with no effect.

"Orders?" Bray asked.

"Confirm your suspicions,” Aria instructed, settling into her couch. "And kill them all. Go."

Nyreen followed Bray out, recovering her voice only when they’d left Afterlife. “What if it isn’t red sand?” she asked the batarian.

He snorted. “Then it’s something else Aria didn’t get her cut from. Eezo, maybe. They’re already dead, Kandros.”

When they pried open the crate, red sand spilled out. Nyreen killed the salarians herself, offering them a swift, merciful death. Bray was not so kind to the vorcha. Their snarls of pain weighed on Nyreen’s mind, but they had broken Omega’s cardinal rule; if Nyreen brought it up, Aria would no doubt say that they had deserved it.

* * *

Nyreen grew to both dread and enjoy lessons with Aria.

On one hand, there was something _about_ Aria—the wicked sneer, maybe, or the all-seeing blue of her eyes. Her presence was intoxicating. Nyreen once had her share of flings with her own kind, but none of those lazy stirrings of interest were anything like the lust she felt for Aria. She wondered if the asari was encouraging it on purpose—a wink here, a smirk there, a playful roll of her eyes—but abandoned that line of thinking immediately. Aria undoubtedly had better playthings than Nyreen.

On the other hand, Aria was demanding, constantly fraying Nyreen's safe boundaries for herself, insistent that she do more to step outside of them. She was dissatisfied with Nyreen's progress, irritated that the turian still wouldn’t call on her biotics in a firefight, disappointed with her caution. Nyreen endured the jabs about her shoddy progress with a stoic face. She still wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to make progress.

But Aria paid well. Nyreen hadn't lived so comfortably in years.

"Pathetic," Aria said. She ripped a hole in Nyreen's shield without moving a muscle or breaking a sweat. " _What_ are you afraid of, little pyjak?"

"I wish you'd stop calling me that," Nyreen muttered, digging shaky fingers into her cowl to compose herself. That shield had used more of her biotics than she was comfortable with, but it was still a pale flame in comparison to Aria's bonfire.

"Maybe I will, when you stop _acting_ like one." Aria shifted, frowning. "Little vermin, hiding on the fringes, stealing the little you can—don't you want to live out in the open sometime, Kandros?"

Nyreen stayed quiet. She didn't. She wanted to live with her hood over her eyes, cloaked by the shadows, safe in anonymity.

Aria let out a long sigh and stretched a hand, palm-up, across the distance between them. "Let me show you what it's like," she offered. Her voice, still tight with frustration, had quieted. "Maybe that will help."

Nyreen eyed the hand suspiciously. "What are you going to do?"

Aria rolled her eyes. "You aren't stupid, Nyreen, much as you pretend to be."

Nyreen knew, and she didn't know how she felt about joining up her consciousness to Aria's—Aria's mind swamping in and crawling around in hers, where she'd hidden a lot of thoughts in the deep, safe shadows.

Aria's fingers flexed impatiently. "Stop worrying."

Nyreen was a cautious woman, but she put her hand in Aria's anyway. The asari's fingers tightened around hers.

"Relax." Aria's voice was still dry as ever, but a different timbre had entered the sound, too, like the most distant echo. She blinked, and her eyes filmed over black, a stark contrast to her indigo skin. "Embrace eternity."

Nyreen opened her eyes; she hadn't realized she'd closed them. They weren't in a room anymore, but standing in the blackest of voids. Aria stood before her, her eyes blue again. There, between them, growing around their interlocked hands, was a riot of blue flame.

Nyreen's chest pulled tight with wonder. She could feel the deep well of power coursing through Aria like it was her own—a river, cold and bottomless, unyielding in its fury. Aria drew it up, up, out, and fifty feet away, a shower of light appeared, sparking and striking at the darkness.

"See?" Aria's smile had gentled. Maybe she could feel the dense emotion welling up, burying Nyreen. "You have it, too. Look."

The fire flickered, became gold and weak, like a tired ray of sunlight on a winter day. Nyreen dug deeper than she'd ever dared, coaxed the flames into a bonfire. She could feel Aria's delight, genuine and dark, and didn't understand it at all—but for once, she wasn't afraid.

"Try it again," Aria ordered.

Nyreen buckled down and slammed a wall of biotic force into place around her. The black void vanished, replaced instead by a shimmering blue wall, thick and flexible and solid. On the other side, Aria hit the mat five feet away with a thud, rolling with a practiced ease. For a split second, the connection between them stayed long enough for Nyreen to feel Aria's vicious triumph, her incredible delight—and then, as she rolled to a stop, the connection snapped, leaving Nyreen breathless and exultant and uncertain.

The silence pressed heavily on Nyreen’s skull, but then, like a cool breeze, Aria laughed. It wasn’t the calculating chuckle or orchestrated snicker she used every day; it was a full, hearty laugh, with her hands clutched to her stomach, exhilarated and gasping, infectious.

Nyreen joined in, holding the shield firm while all the tension in her chest loosened and drained away.

"Good," Aria said, pressing to her feet. Her smile was proud, still with that hint of derision, but Nyreen took the compliment all the same. "Now. Let's see what it takes for you to drop it."

* * *

The months passed.

Nyreen settled tentatively into her new apartment on Omega—close to Afterlife, close to Aria. Items began to stray from her footlocker, taking up residence around the room. More than just guns and armor: mementos, things from her old life and her new one. She was a turian, of course, so she was practical—one footlocker, that was all she allowed herself—but there were things that she couldn’t part with: a model cruiser her mother had given her a few weeks before boot camp, which she had painstakingly assembled; a bottle of asari honey mead she bought on Illium because she liked the color it turned when it caught the light, not because she could safely drink it; a luxurious scarf that she now draped over her single small window, which had been given to her by an overly sentimental elcor she’d completed a contract for a few years ago.

It had been years since she was anything but a restless mercenary, wandering the stars, never staying anywhere too long. She’d never thought her final resting place would be Omega.

Her days were long. Working for Aria was a gruelling, full time affair. She ate handfuls of nuts while hiding in the ducts, working reconnaissance, and barely had time to choke down a meal between naps. But her savings hadn't been this full in five years—Aria paid her well. When she heard Bray grumbling about his most recent cut, she wondered if Aria was paying her _too_ well, but maybe she led a more frugal lifestyle than the batarian.

Sometimes, Aria accompanied her on missions. It wasn’t frequent, but she sensed that the asari's skin started itching if she stayed in Afterlife too long.

"Don't tell anyone," Aria ordered, kicking open a well-disguised grate.

Nyreen ducked through, minding her cowl. "I'll do my best," she replied. Some of Aria's bitter humor had begun to rub off on her; Nyreen's words had had the same bite, once, long ago. It felt warm and familiar on her tongue.

Aria chuckled. "These are Omega's best-kept secrets," she said, keeping her voice low. "Patriarch didn't even know about them."

"That old krogan you keep down in lower Afterlife?" Nyreen glanced over her shoulder. "What would he know?"

"Who do you think I hideously maimed to take control of this rock?" Aria snarked back. "It certainly wasn't _Bray_."

Nyreen came to a full stop and turned to face Aria. When the asari wasn't wearing heels, Nyreen was taller—much taller. She'd never noticed that before.

"You took Omega from a krogan and left him alive?" Nyreen asked. "Why?"

Aria folded her arms over her chest, mouth drawing into a firm, unyielding line. "Careful, little pyjak," she murmured.

For a moment, Nyreen stood over her, a spark of defiance demanding that she hold her ground—after all, Aria knew all her secrets; why shouldn't she know some of Aria's?

But after a long, tense moment, she dipped her chin and turned back to the task at hand. "I forgot myself," she said, moving forward. "My apologies."

They strode along the tunnel. Nyreen's mind had just turned back to her duties—watching out for stolen eezo shipments hiding beyond the holes in this duct—when Aria spoke.

"Patriarch and I worked together for a hundred years," she said. "There are people on this rock who still remember his glory days. I kept him alive as a reminder—and a trophy."

"Don't fuck with Aria," Nyreen echoed—some of the first words she had heard on Omega.

"Don't fuck with Aria," the asari agreed. "Satisfied?"

She wasn't, but Nyreen knew better than to say otherwise. "Look," she said, pointing out a stack of crates and the handful of guards just in front of them.

"Blood Pack," Aria sighed, her fist glowing up blue.

"Wait," Nyreen hissed, reaching out to shove Aria's hand back down. Aria stiffened beneath her touch, and Nyreen released her. "We don't need to make a scene."

Aria rolled her eyes. "That's the best part. Watch yourself, Kandros. My patience is thin."

Nyreen thought that her plan was better, though—if she did her job right, none of the eezo would be damaged, and Aria would get some use out of the shipment still. If they went in shooting, that wasn’t a guarantee.

"Cover me," she said, and before Aria could argue, Nyreen vaulted over the duct and ran full out at the stack of crates.

The guards were baffled by her sudden appearance, and the few rounds they got off were enough for her hardsuit shield to take care of. She leapt, scrambling up the crates, and then, when she was dead center, she slammed down her biotic shield, enveloping the shipment and sending the mercs rolling.

Aria picked them off within seconds while they were disoriented, quick shots that sounded warped through the shield. When all the mercs were down, Nyreen dropped her shield, mandibles wide in a grin.

"Next time," Aria called, stowing her gun, "you could take five extra seconds to get me on board."

"Next time," Nyreen replied, "you'll already know that's what I'm planning."

"Don't push it," Aria said, but there was a smirk on her lips.

* * *

Sometimes, Aria invited Nyreen to Afterlife—not for work, or strategy, but for drinks.

It wasn’t like they weren’t still surrounded by guards; it wasn’t like they didn't both still wear their guns; and it wasn’t like they didn't watch the usual entrances and exits, like always—but there was alcohol involved, and it was a rare day when Nyreen got a nice brandy anymore.

And Aria's couch was comfortable—particularly soft, in a way Aria wasn’t.

"Your trial period is over," Aria remarked after a few moments of sitting in comfortable silence.

Nyreen blinked.

"You forgot," Aria smirked.

"I did not," Nyreen replied. "Is six months standard with you?"

" _Trial periods_ are not standard with me," Aria said. "So what will it be, Kandros? Are you staying, or are you going?"

"If I left, would you have me killed?"

Aria considered it, sipping her drink. "No," she said at last. "But you would need to get off my space station. And Nyreen, honestly, do you trust me to tell you if I plan to kill you?"

Once, perhaps, those words would have twisted around Nyreen's spine like a winter chill; now, though, the resulting shiver was weak. "Point," she said lightly. "And if I stayed?"

"A raise, maybe," Aria dismissed, leaning back. "We could continue to work on your biotics. Job satisfaction."

Nyreen snorted.

"You're not satisfied here, Nyreen?" Aria asked, her smirk growing. "What could I do to entice you?"

Nyreen's chest tightened up. She had overcome these odd—feelings—she had for Aria, mostly. They resurfaced at the most inconvenient moments. _Tell me you **want** me to stay_, she thought pointlessly. _Not for my biotics, not for my potential, just—for me_.

She was on the verge of saying it, too, foolish stuttering and all, but that was when she spotted a flicker of movement above them. A red laser dot appeared on Aria's forehead.

Nyreen didn't think; she didn't have to. She'd had months of Aria's hands digging around in the power inside her, teaching her how to shape it and control it and use it. She funneled it, up and out, and snapped the protective shield into place around Omega's queen. The bullet bounced harmlessly away, leaving a ripple like a raindrop on a pond in Nyreen’s shield.

Aria's blue eyes narrowed with rage. Nyreen was looking at them—a mistake—when the shot, heavy enough to be a sledgehammer, hit her in the chest. She fell back to the couch, wheezing, clinging to the shield with a tenuous grasp, and saw through her wavering vision as Bray picked off the assassin.

Afterlife roared around them. Aria was at her side, separated from her by the blue flame of her biotics. "Drop it," she shouted, pressing her hands against the inside of the shield with her own biotics, but she couldn't budge it. "Damn it, Nyreen, drop the shield!"

With what felt like a massive effort, Nyreen cut the contact. She breathed, and the air got stuck in her lungs. "Damn it," Aria said again, a small blue hand already pressing to the smoking hole in Nyreen's tunic. "Modded rounds. Get a medic," she ordered Bray, "and if every last one of those bastards isn't dead in the next ten minutes—"

Nyreen took one more breath and fainted.

* * *

She woke up in her bed, stripped bare from the waist up, thick gauze wrapped around her chest—which still felt tight, uncomfortably so. Uncertainly, she inhaled. There was no pain, just a sense like locked muscles straining against her. She struggled up to one elbow, cursing, and groped around for the sheet.

"Oh, great, you're awake," Aria said, striding into the room. Her voice dripped venom. "Now I can berate a conscious turian. Goody."

Nyreen pulled the sheet up over her chest, tucking it firmly under her arms, and with some effort, scooted back until she was braced against the pillows and headboard. Sitting up, she felt a little more capable of facing Aria, who looked both tired and livid.

"Who was it?" Nyreen asked—a sorry attempt to derail her.

"The Blood Pack," Aria replied, dropping into the chair beside the bed and kicking her feet up onto the mattress. "Their numbers have fallen...significantly."

Nyreen reminded herself to breathe. "Amon?" she asked, naming the Blood Pack Leader.

"I ripped him in half myself," Aria said, her lips pulling into a sneer. "Promoted Garm. He'll do."

Nyreen nodded, already out of words to stem the tide of Aria's rage, and looked down at her lap. Her spurs dug into the mattress.

"What were you thinking?" The note in Aria's voice was unrecognizable; the little waver sounded briefly of fear. Nyreen dismissed it as just a new level of outrage from the asari. When was the great Aria ever afraid?

"I wasn't," Nyreen answered truthfully. "You didn't have to patch me up."

Aria laughed, a short, nearly hysteric note—her famed control suddenly unraveling. Nyreen shifted uneasily.

"You think I'm angry because you got yourself shot?" she demanded. "I guess I am. You could just as easily have shielded both of us."

"I wasn't sure my control was that good yet," Nyreen muttered. "I thought—a good enough sniper might punch through." It was a lie; she’d once made a shield big enough to cover a shipment of eezo in the middle of a battle.

Aria waved this off. "It’s irrelevant, I suppose. No—I'm angry because _you_ , of every person in that booth, _you_ saw the threat. _You_ saved my life."

"Uh." Nyreen considered this. "I'm...sorry?"

"Why would you bother?" Aria asked, as though genuinely curious, leaning forward in her chair. "You hate Omega. You resent me. We were negotiating the terms of your speedy departure from this space station, and the next thing I know, you're taking a bullet for me."

"That's not strictly true," Nyreen argued. "It was an accident. I mean, not _protecting_ you, that was on purpose." She squared her shoulders. "And I wasn't planning on leaving, actually."

"No?" Aria said; the sweep of color on her browbone arched up. "You were just playing hard to get, then?"

Nyreen swallowed. "Yes?" she offered, lifting a hand to grind the heel of her palm into her chest, just over the spot where she had been shot. A little twinge of pain stirred deep down.

"You're fine," Aria said, a touch exasperated, and reached out to pull Nyreen's hand away from the wound. "It was a modded round, otherwise it never would have made it through your plating." She knocked appreciatively, but gently, against Nyreen's cowl. "It was a pain in the ass to dig out, but you'll be fine. Give it a day or two, you'll be back in the ducts spying on people."

Nyreen laughed; the twinge of pain fired up in her chest, but she ignored it. Aria's hand was still wrapped around hers, cradled gently on the comforter. She hadn't known Aria _could_ be gentle, but her smirk had gone sort of soft at the edges.

"I want a raise," Nyreen told her, half-joking.

"I guess you've earned it," Aria replied.

Feeling uncharacteristically brave, Nyreen squeezed Aria's hand. The asari didn't pull away.

"I don't resent you," she said.

"I don't care," Aria said, enunciating every syllable, like if she said it clearly enough, it would be true. “Shut up.”

Nyreen didn't push it.

[ ](http://laur-rants.tumblr.com/post/93302369159/for-todisturbtheuniverses-mebb-story-event#permalink-notes)

* * *

The scar was smooth and raised, a pebble denting her previously flat plating. Round, with a jagged edge. As promised, she was back to full strength within two days, but nothing was the same. People recognized her when she strode into Afterlife; they nodded to her or fell back. They noticed her—not to sneer or start a fight, but because they respected her.

Technically, there were no ranks under Aria. This wasn't a military organization. But Nyreen effectively became her second-in-command, her persistent shadow, her constant companion, her most useful strategist. Bray was shuffled down, and grumbled about it, but didn't do anything more than complain. Even he treated Nyreen with grudging respect now.

In the wake of the Blood Pack attack, they cracked down hard on the other merc gangs, putting in appearances in their districts, making it clear that they were being watched. Aria tightened down on port control, set up emergency docks that she closed off to the public, established fall-back where her operation would be able to recover if it ever came under attack again.

Nyreen assisted. It was tireless, thankless work, but she'd come to believe that the merc gangs would destroy Omega's fragile livelihood if they ever seized control. They would burn out the drills at the asteroid's core; they would grind the space station into dust. And where would the galaxy's lost go to hide then?

They didn't see a single firefight in the month after the attempt on Aria's life. Omega was on its best behavior.

"I hate it," Aria remarked, sinking down to the floor of her apartment. "It's like a pressure cooker."

Nyreen followed her down to the plush carpet, getting comfortable. They shared drinks here sometimes, when Aria wasn't in the mood to be on her guard; Afterlife had left her edgier than usual in recent weeks. Nyreen didn't blame her. The turian was always on watch, too.

"I'm sure it will boil over eventually," Nyreen said, absently soothing. "Then you'll be complaining that there's too much to do."

"I don't complain," Aria replied primly.

They settled into meditation, conjuring a biotic spark between them to maintain, and sat in silence for a while. It drew from Nyreen's reserves, but replenished them, too—something about taking the power back into her, when they were done. She liked to think that she drew strength from Aria—it did seem to be the case—but she didn't dare think it too loudly. Sometimes, she was afraid the asari could hear.

After thirty minutes, Aria shook off the biotics. They fled back into her skin, glowing up and fading again. She got to her feet while Nyreen flexed her fingertips, reabsorbing her own sparks. They felt familiar now, comfortable—native to her, rather than foreign.

“Drink?” Aria asked, already crossing to the kitchen.

Aria kept turian brandy at her apartment now, just for Nyreen. It prompted a strange little swell of affection in the Nyreen's chest. Aria unstoppered it and poured out a measure before she mixed her own drink. They leaned side-by-side against the cabinets, drowsy and relaxed from meditation.

"I like it here," Nyreen said. She felt as if Aria deserved to know, somehow.

Aria snorted—an unusually graceless sound for an asari. "Here, in this apartment, or here, on Omega?"

She glanced sideways at Aria. Blue eyes narrowed up at her. "Both."

Aria’s mouth pulled up at one corner—a small, lazy smirk. "That's very honest of you."

Nyreen shrugged. "I'm in an honest mood."

Aria put her glass down. "Maybe I am, too."

"When are you ever honest?" Nyreen chuckled—half-teasing, half-exasperated.

Aria pushed away from the counter. Nyreen set her glass down, too, thinking she might need to defend herself, but then Aria stepped around to face her. She leaned in, planting her palms on the countertop, just to each side of Nyreen's hips.

Nyreen was still deciding what to do with her own hands when Aria spoke. "You're a frustrating tightass."

Nyreen blinked. "I expected something a little more complimentary, given that it seemed like you were about to seduce me." Bold words, for someone whose stomach shivered in fear.

"What, it isn't working?" Aria asked, a note of derision in her voice.

Tentatively, Nyreen closed her hands around Aria's waist, hauling her a bit closer. She came willingly enough, breasts pressing to Nyreen's chest and cowl. It was...remarkably pleasant. Aria’s skin was soft between the cutouts of her jumpsuit—lightly textured, warm beneath Nyreen’s fingers.

"It is," she admitted. She sounded breathy, even to her own ears, her subvocals sliding out of her control. "I don't know what that says about me."

"Nothing positive," Aria agreed, lifting her hands from the counter to fit them around the rim of Nyreen's cowl. Her voice had gone husky, low, a purr. "Maybe we should move this out of the kitchen."

Nyreen wondered what she was getting herself into—what good could possibly come of sleeping with Aria, the most dangerous woman on Omega, maybe the most dangerous woman in the galaxy, who probably already had contingency plans in place to kill Nyreen if she stepped out of line.

"Maybe we should," she replied, giving in.

Turians didn't kiss like a lot of other species—they didn't, technically speaking, have the equipment for it, not like drell or humans or asari. But Aria had lips, soft, malleable, that pressed against Nyreen's mouthplates, and it wasn't an unpleasant sensation at all. Aria's fingers found the outline of Nyreen's crest, dipped behind it, and stroked the soft skin there until Nyreen shivered.

They fumbled blindly toward Aria's bedroom and collapsed in a heap in the half-dark, tangled together, pulling at one another's clothes. Nyreen plucked the jacket from Aria's shoulders; the asari shrugged out of it with ease, without complaint. Aria pulled Nyreen's tunic open, her fingers catching and rubbing on the scar just to the left of her keel bone. Nyreen itched for Aria’s hands to move lower, for Aria’s softly textured fingers to graze over the vulnerable skin of her sides and belly, and if she didn’t do it _soon_ —

But Aria did, nimble hands stroking slow patterns down Nyreen’s waist. Nyreen sucked in a useless breath, expelled it with a wordless moan, and then Aria replaced her hands with her lips, her tongue— _spirits_ —and Nyreen’s vocal cords locked up too tightly to release even the smallest whimper.

Aria's jumpsuit came off, hooked on Nyreen's talons, and Nyreen's leggings were stripped briskly away. Aria went carefully around her spurs, minding the angles with deliberation, and then they were both bare, skin casually brushing with every movement. Aria’s hands wrapped firmly around Nyreen’s thighs, pulling and manipulating her body until they were tangled together: Nyreen on her back, Aria sprawled over her, their legs interlocking.

Aria caught her attention again with a firm hand around the flare of her crest. Her eyes blinked and filmed over black. "Do you want to do this the asari way, too?" she asked. Nyreen could hear the smirk in her voice even if she couldn't quite see it in the dim light. "I've heard it's an experience."

"Yes," Nyreen gasped. She meant for the word to come out firm, but it escaped in a juddering sigh instead, and Aria laughed—light, musical—before the strength of her rushed in to meet Nyreen.

It didn't seem like such a hurry once they were _together_ , like that, with everything Aria felt reverberating in Nyreen and vice versa. They became a vast echo chamber, where the sound was one escalating feeling of pleasure, amplified with every head-on collision. Nyreen was vaguely aware of their writhing bodies, the steady grind of a soft thigh between her legs, the warm wet of Aria on her skin—and Aria's hands on her waist, and one of Nyreen's fists clenched tight in fine silk sheets—but mostly, she was stricken by the overpowering wave of Aria’s consciousness. It fused into every cell and joint and neural bridge, relentless, conveying the keening sense of Aria's breathless pleasure. Her usual unyielding demeanor collapsed, so much dust, and Nyreen was carried away by something else instead.

It was dim and claustrophobic when she finally left Nyreen, her consciousness slipping away in a haze of satisfaction. She stretched languidly, letting out a long, pleased sigh.

"I wouldn't be opposed to doing that again," she said, a touch drowsily. "There's extra pillows in the closet, if the bed's not soft enough for you."

Nyreen was just about to tease how _considerate_ that was when Aria's eyes fell shut. The next breath was long and deep. Just like that—asleep. No anxiety, no deliberation. Nyreen stared for a long, dazed moment, tracking the movement of Aria’s chest as it rose and fell.

Aria had to have had dozens of lovers over her hundreds of years. Nyreen couldn’t imagine her going without. Was she like this with all of them? Did she always leave herself open to attack in the aftermath—all that soft, shallowly textured skin, faintly violet in the red light of Omega, so easily torn by a stray talon? Even now, thin marks were appearing around her waist, her ribs, her thighs: the places where Nyreen had squeezed too hard, forgetting herself while buried in ecstasy. Even blunted claws could leave scratches on such vulnerable skin.

But there Aria lay, her body limp and open, as though she didn’t fear that Nyreen would gut her while she slept.

Nyreen had power—never mind that she would never use it.

Feeling a little giddy, she went in search of pillows.

* * *

Drell assassins called it "battle sleep," and it was not unlike what Nyreen slipped into on Omega.

She was not an assassin, but she _was_ a tool, and she went where Aria ordered her—did what Aria ordered her. She spied, and she killed, and she fucked, and for the most part, she felt satisfied. At times, an itch niggled at the back of her skull, a questioning voice calling out, but she discarded it. She was happier on Omega than she had been since before her biotics manifested. That was not so hard a thing to accept. She played cards with the denizens of Afterlife; danced with Aria, when the asari wanted to; spent only half the long nights at her own apartment, in her own bed. Aria was addicting, and Nyreen was happily addicted.

She should have known better.

On her way back to Afterlife after shadowing one of Aria’s dancers—the girl worked for the Shadow Broker, bad news for her—Nyreen crossed paths with Preitor Gavorn. She was familiar enough with the turian, though they hadn’t spoken; he was another of Aria’s standard thugs, occupying a position well below hers.

He was folded up, carefully packed behind a pile of scrap metal with his pistol in hand, clearly waiting for something. She remained in the shadows, curious. The only thing on the other side of that scrap metal was a pair of vorcha, muttering to each other, picking through the trash.

Gavorn popped up after a moment, took aim, and fired. It happened too quickly for Nyreen to intervene, and too quickly for the vorcha to run; they dropped, one after another, sickening thuds on the grimy floor.

“What are you _doing_?” Nyreen demanded, throwing her hood back and striding out of the shadows.

Gavorn didn’t jump, but he did turn to look at her, eyes narrowing; they traced the path of her tattoo, a red streak that most of Omega recognized now. If he’d ever had his own markings, they’d long since been scrubbed away.

“Killing vorcha,” he said, holstering his pistol as though he’d decided that she wasn’t a threat. He eyed her waist with interest.

She folded her arms beneath her cowl. “Why?” she bit off. The venom in her tone made him look up.

“Why does anyone do anything on Omega?” he replied, shrugging. “Because Aria said.”

“They weren’t doing anything,” she insisted.

“They were breathing. That’s enough for the boss these days.”

“And those were her exact orders,” Nyreen said, her stomach sinking.

He knelt to rifle around in the pack on the ground beside him and handed a datapad up to her. “Pretty much verbatim.”

She held the words in numb fingers, scanning the brisk note with disbelief. Aria was many things, but this—if the asari had a code, Nyreen thought she’d figured it out. Pointlessly murdering vorcha did not factor into that code.

“I’m keeping this,” she said, turning away.

Gavorn coughed. “Don’t tell her you got it from me. Got the feeling she didn’t want you to know.”

Nyreen walked away without replying, her feet beating a familiar path to Afterlife while her mind buzzed. _It’s a mistake_ , she told herself, but even she didn’t believe it.

Aria wasn’t on her throne; Bray informed her that she’d gone to her apartment and left instructions for Nyreen to meet her there. Hurried now, she took the ducts from Afterlife, a shortcut to Aria’s front door.

She had planned a more elegant beginning to the conversation, but as soon as she was inside, the words tumbled gracelessly from her mouth. "You have a squad just to murder vorcha?" she said, holding up the datapad.

It only gave Aria a moment’s pause, and then she waved it off, drink in hand. "They'd overrun the damn station if we didn't institute some population control."

"That's _genocide_ , Ari," Nyreen protested, one hand clenching reflexively into a fist. "How long has this been going on?"

Aria's lips tightened; she took a long drink before answering. "Since the Blood Pack tried to assassinate me," she said at last—cool, clipped, controlled. "You might remember."

"Not every vorcha is Blood Pack!" Nyreen cried. "There are outliers in every species—you can't just gun them down in the street for existing!"

"Can't I?" Aria snapped, straightening up from where she leaned against the counter. Her fist clenched; a blue corona formed, faint but present, around her fingertips. "Omega is _mine_ , Nyreen, and I'll do as I wish."

Nyreen stood her ground. "This is too far. Everything we do is questionable, but this—there is no question. This isn’t moral bankruptcy. This is slaughter."

Aria laughed. "Babe, there's no question about anything we do. You just find a way to justify it, so that you don't have trouble sleeping at night." Her lips smiled, a sweet, distracting curve; she stepped forward, going from fury to seduction in an instant. "Accept it, Nyreen. Your morals have been compromised."

Nyreen backed away, maintaining the distance between them. "I don't justify anything. There is _some_ good in what you do. I know what the merc groups on this station are like. If you weren't restraining them, Omega wouldn't just reek of fear—the streets would run with blood."

"I'm the lesser evil, hmm?" Aria asked, snickering. "That's an awfully big compromise."

"Our world isn't black and white," Nyreen insisted. "There are shades of gray. Some lighter than others."

She was out of room to retreat, and Aria knew it. The asari had her up against the wall, fitting slim fingers neatly inside Nyreen's cowl. "That was almost a compliment, coming from you," she purred.

"We can compromise on this.” Nyreen tried to pretend that she wasn’t pleading. If she just fooled herself a bit longer, she could imagine a swell of affection in the way Aria's lips hitched up at the corners, the way she rose up to her toes to brush a kiss to Nyreen's jaw.

"What would you suggest?" she said, pretending patience.

"The mines are understaffed," Nyreen said quickly, before her window of opportunity could slam shut. "If you gave them direction—something to do with their time—maybe they'd contribute to Omega instead of littering the streets. And they'd give the money back—buy things instead of steal them, pay rent instead of squat in the back alleys."

Aria considered it, her eyes steady on Nyreen's—and then, with a heavy sigh that smelled of gin, she pressed her lips to Nyreen's mouth. Nyreen closed her eyes, lost for a moment.

"We'll try it," Aria said, with a tone that said she didn't believe it would work for a second. "Come to bed, will you?"

Nyreen went.

* * *

But the turian, after so long asleep, woke. She noticed what she did not before.

Aria was careful to always send someone else for reconnaissance in the mines. Nyreen's patrols were limited to districts where everything was quiet, where all was well, where Aria's influence had done the most good. She suspected that someone had altered her omnitool to black out less than positive readings from other regions of Omega, but she did not betray her suspicion.

Aria had to believe that all was well, right up until Nyreen was ready to make her move.

She should not have been so foolish. Of course a woman like Aria would not be told what to do. Nyreen wondered why she bothered to hide it, rather than throw Nyreen off Omega and get on with her life, but she suspected that she was lied to for the same reason that Aria kept Patriarch in that room in Afterlife: Nyreen was a trophy. Her continued obedience while Aria screwed her proved to all contenders that Aria retained absolute control.

Nyreen had never believed that Aria would give that control up, but she had also never believed it would hurt her this much.

When she could no longer ignore the paranoia that twisted her gut, she left Aria’s bed for her assigned reconnaissance mission—a little too early, but the asari didn’t notice. She was sound asleep, her head tipped sideways on the pillow, the sheet a mussed pile over her sprawling limbs. Nyreen stood in the doorway, looking back at her for a long moment. In the red light of Omega’s skyline, Aria’s skin was even more deeply indigo than usual—almost purple, like the freckles scattered over her shoulders.

_I don’t have to leave,_ she told herself, but that was the flimsiest lie yet. Nyreen had thirty extra minutes, and she had already wasted one of them. She left Aria where she slept and tried not to shiver at the cold chill of dread that touched her spine.

She crept through the ducts that Aria had once shown her, so casually, as though she showed everyone who was important enough. She knew the way to the mines—spirits, these days, she knew the entire station, could navigate it with her eyes closed. It wasn’t far if she took the right shortcuts and elevators; she arrived in ten minutes.

She watched from the scaffolding with her heartbeat heavy in her ears, taking in the situation in Omega’s mines. She needed to be careful. Methodic. She had to think through her best course of action. She had to save the vid she was taking—the _evidence_ —until the right moment.

She turned away when she could stay no longer, sick at heart. She hoped her next mark deserved to die. In her slumber, she had allowed something awful to escape into the galaxy. It was time to wake up.

* * *

It took weeks to put everything in place: to slowly move her things back into her footlocker; to build up a stash of food in a hidden duct that could last her months; to continue carrying out Aria’s work while she braced herself for the end.

When Nyreen allowed herself to think too deeply about that finite point in time—a time when she would no longer be Aria’s partner, whatever that meant—she became even slower than she had been. She tried not to think about it. It brought back the awful, tight feeling in her chest, made her wish for terrible things: that she’d never seen Gavorn shooting those vorcha, maybe, or that she’d been stupid enough not to notice how subtly Aria was playing her.

She had noticed, and that was that. There was no room for wishing anymore.

On her last day off, she double-checked her preparations, made sure everything was in place, and sat on her neatly made bed in her empty apartment, struggling to find the nerve to confront Aria. She wasn’t afraid of what Aria would do to her, not exactly. She was _grieving_ , she thought, over the loss of something that had never existed in the first place. Once, not so long ago, she had considered Omega her home—she had considered _Aria_ her home.

She rose, walked to the door, didn’t look back. She took the long way to Aria’s apartment, keyed in the familiar code at the door, and walked in. Aria looked up from her datapad. For a fraction of a second, her features brightened, as though pleased to see Nyreen striding into her kitchen.

"I'm not a slaver," Nyreen said. _Graceless, as always_ , she thought, but without dismay; it was an empty acknowledgement.

Aria placed the datapad on the table. When she looked up again, her face was a smooth mask, much like the one she’d worn when they first met.

"As far as I know, no," she said. "You're not."

_But I am,_ Nyreen thought. She wondered if there were enough good deeds in the galaxy to absolve her of her part in this, but truthfully, it didn’t matter; she would acquit herself or die trying.

Nyreen keyed the encryption into her omnitool. The vid played. She watched Aria's face, the stoic set of it, as the scene played out: the vorcha chained to the machines; the vorcha bleeding and sweating; the vorcha dying of exhaustion in Aria's eezo mines.

"Well," Aria remarked as the holo ended. "I knew you would find out eventually."

Nyreen let her arm fall. "This can't go on," she said, more vehemently than she felt. "This is monstrous, Ari. This is beneath you."

Aria's lips curled into a sneer. She flowed to her feet, knocking her chair back. "You don't tell me what to do, babe. I kept you out of it—kept your precious conscience clean. But the vorcha are scum, and they deserve to die like scum. If you're too squeamish for it, well. I didn't ask you to pull the trigger."

"Are you really that cruel?" Nyreen asked. "That hateful? They're people, Aria. They have a reputation, but they aren't animals." _And I stood by,_ she thought, sickened. _I was complacent. I took part in this slaughter. Their blood is on my hands, too._

"I haven't touched the Blood Pack's recruits," Aria replied. "It's the trash littering the streets that I'm rounding up. Any vorcha with sense isn't caught dead loitering or stealing from me anymore. Besides, they aren’t _slaves_. They’re...indentured servants. They survive their term, they’re free to go."

Nyreen folded her arms over her chest. "I thought you provided a service for Omega. You kept people free."

Aria shook her head. "Not everyone deserves freedom."

She wouldn't be moved. Nyreen had known that from the beginning.

"Either we drop this, and never speak of it again," Aria said, her eyes like steel, "or you leave Omega, and don't look back."

Nyreen nodded, a single motion to seal her fate before she could falter. "You won't see me again," she promised, and looked her fill of Aria one last time: the flicker of blue glowing up around her knuckles, the defiant set of her chin, the rigid brace of her shoulders. She remembered the spray of indigo freckles over her shoulders, the soft touch of her hands, the liquid black of her eyes.

She turned away, and she was surprised that Aria didn't shoot her in the back on her way out.

* * *

It was over so quickly, but Nyreen did not leave Omega.

Once, she had believed that she did some good here. Now, she believed that she would do penance here. She knew better than to expect it to be comfortable; she would live like a duct rat, hidden away in the tunnels that were Omega's best-kept secret. She would be a fugitive from one of the most powerful women in the galaxy, and right under the asari's nose.

She found a suitable corner for her footlocker and settled back into the shadows. It might have been her imagination, but she thought that they welcomed her home.

* * *

Nyreen worked through the mines first, at a rare moment when the drills were off.

She slipped around Aria's overseers and freed the brutalized workers one by one. Some snapped at her; more took the opportunity to run for the exit, overwhelming the surprised guards there.

Aria reacted as Nyreen had expected. She watched the asari pace her booth at Afterlife, speaking at a furious pace to Bray. “Things will go back to the way they were before,” she seethed. “Let the trash live on the street. I'll use more capable workers, and we can gun them down where we like.” In a mutter, she added, "Slavery didn't suit me, anyway."

Nyreen didn’t know whether genocide was better, but at least the vorcha could run when they weren’t shackled to mining equipment. At least they could fight back.

* * *

Nyreen listened at Afterlife often. It was difficult to hear much—she had to fiddle with a lot of mods on her omnitool to cut through the bass and chatter—but she needed to know if Aria knew she was here, so she checked in regularly, perched in a vent lofted above Aria's booth.

[ ](http://laur-rants.tumblr.com/post/93302369159/for-todisturbtheuniverses-mebb-story-event#permalink-notes)

"No sign of her," Bray remarked, a few weeks after the release of the mine workers. "Eyewitnesses confirm she booked passage on a ship to Illium. No one has seen her on the station since."

"No one but Nyreen would care about those damned vorcha," Aria snarled. "Look harder."

Nyreen kept a low profile. It got boring, the waiting. She was terrified and angry by turns, but what came back most often was the terrible lethargy, the itch in her plates when she hadn't been out of her bolthole in weeks.

But if Aria found her, Aria would kill her, and Nyreen didn’t want to die.

* * *

Aria gave up when bigger problems presented themselves.

She was distracted by Archangel, the vigilante doing housecleaning in the lower districts, but she didn't move against him. Nyreen briefly considered joining up with Archangel's squad. She admired the work that the other turian was doing, but she also thought it was reckless, flashy. If your jobs spawned you a nickname with the locals, you weren’t doing them quietly enough.

Nyreen needed to stay quiet, these days. She kept to the ducts.

Aria's real troubles began when a human Spectre brought her a datapad. It wasn't just Blood Pack mobilizing against Aria this time; it was every major merc group on the station. Aria was livid. The crackdown on Blood Pack four years ago was nothing to how she came down on the gangs now.

_If only Aria had waited_ , Nyreen thought later. Then she might never have lost the station to Cerberus.

* * *

There was only one gang left in town after Archangel’s last stand and Aria’s persecution: the Talons.

With Cerberus around every corner and Aria gone, Nyreen crept through the ducts, following Derius. He was a hard man to get alone. She disliked his beard, especially the way it twitched around his lips while he talked. She would probably even enjoy killing him. He was slime; she’d made sure of that much. He ran the Talons for profit, indulged in a lot of practices that were not questionable at all, and he was an ass.

He was also the first mark she’d had in a year—the first one she’d ever assigned to herself. She disliked the necessity of it, but Cerberus…

Aria had ruled Omega with a bloody fist, but she had not packed civilians into zones and forbade their movement. She had slaughtered vorcha—her great, insurmountable grudge—but she hadn’t unleashed monsters to maintain a state of fear. Cruel as she had been—terrible as she had been—she had cared for Omega. She had kept its economy healthy; she had kept its inhabitants free.

Cerberus did not believe in freedom. Cerberus believed in exploitation. They would destroy this last dim refuge for people with nowhere else to go, and then they would leave, a burned-out shell populated only by adjutants in their wake.

Nyreen wanted to stop them, but she couldn’t do it alone.

It had taken a few weeks’ study of Derius’s routine to learn his vulnerable points. There was this alley he cut through, but only sometimes—when he was running late, or in a hurry. He knew better than to do it regularly. Today was her lucky day.

She found the slot she’d carved out of the duct and placed her rifle, put her eye to the scope. There he was; he would never know what hit him. Three, two…

She squeezed the trigger, and he dropped, only a muffled thud to mark his passing. “Hey!” a voice at the end of the alley cried.

Nyreen folded up her rifle and dropped from the duct, just as a turian and a human approached the body. They wore Talon colors.

“Hey, yourself,” she called, throwing back her hood. Her memory of Aria was convoluted, difficult, but she reached into it to affect the right careless stance—the cool confidence that the asari had always possessed.

They looked up, mouths gaping. One went for her gun, but the turian shook his head, forcing the woman’s arm down. Nyreen approached slowly. She didn’t want to spook them, but she also needed them afraid—for now.

“You work for me now,” Nyreen told them. She was close enough to nudge Derius’s body with her foot. “Fair repayment for delivering you from this scum, I think.”

“And who the hell are you?” the woman demanded.

“Aria’s favorite pet,” the other Talon remarked, watching Nyreen warily. “At least, until about a year ago. Word was you left Omega.”

“Guess the word was wrong,” Nyreen replied. “How are you getting along with Cerberus?”

The pair exchanged a look. “No one gets along with Cerberus,” the woman said.

“Derius didn’t fight them much, did he, as long as they let him go about his business.” She glanced down at the body.

“Derius didn’t care about anything except his profit margin,” the turian snorted. “Cerberus is here kicking Omega to pieces and he’s busy counting his credits.”

Nyreen smiled with a flare of her mandibles. “Well,” she said. “How would you like to kick back?”

* * *

It took six months for Aria to return to Omega.

Nyreen had expected her a little sooner, but if Aria was dealing with _Spectres_ now—spirits, what a notion—then no wonder it had taken her some extra time.

Part of her wished Aria hadn’t come back. Nyreen ran Omega’s underground with what little pleasure she had left, but it wasn’t about pleasure; it was about penance. Another part of her, of course—the part that was responsible for her need to do penance in the first place—had missed Aria so much that she’d ached.

She’d even missed life-or-death combat situations involving the asari, though she supposed that just made her a particularly enthusiastic mercenary.

Nyreen funneled her reserves down into her shield and picked off mechs one by one with her free trigger finger. She could feel Aria straining, digging deeper and deeper, scooping up handfuls of raw power like it wasn't killing her to do so, ripping a hole in the lewd red wall with nothing but her towering will.

Even after all this time—after everything Aria had done—Nyreen was in awe of her. What a stupid, dangerous sentiment. Hadn’t Nyreen accomplished so much more than Aria ever had? Her people didn’t serve her because they feared her; they served her because they _loved_ her. They fought at her side because they trusted her to return Omega to them. The turians in her ranks had scrubbed their faded colony markings from their faces and laid down new red paint there in imitation of _her_ —without her direction, without her prompting, just because.

Because they were her people. Because she was their leader. And yet, here she was, still the rookie, breathless in the presence of Omega’s deposed queen.

Shepard sprinted out of sight without a backward glance, and Nyreen reached down as soon as Aria hit the ground, the red force field knitting over the hole her biotics had left. The asari’s hand closed around hers.

“Spirits, Aria.” The words wrenched from her throat. “How did you know you could do that?”

Sweat stood out on Aria’s brow as she regained her balance. For once, she looked truly worse for the wear, trembling faintly from exertion.

“I didn’t,” she admitted.

They holed up behind a crate, both gasping for breath. The mechs closed in. They popped up, fired, ducked. Nyreen's eyes swept the field, tracking the movement of the closing phantoms.

"Just like old times," Aria taunted, lips curling into a sneer. "Good job not getting shot."

That was, of course, the moment that Nyreen got shot.

* * *

She woke to the sound of gunfire.

This was a worse wound than the one she had once taken in Afterlife, years ago; she could feel the deep ache of it beneath where medigel had clumsily healed her skin. It had hit her in the side, of course, missing the narrow strip of plating protecting her belly and sinking deep into her exposed flesh instead.

"Up and at 'em," Aria shouted, kneeling over her. She shot the head off a mech ten feet away, her omnitool still glowing. "Shepard's taking her sweet fucking time, and we need to hold out while she does!"

The motion made her entire right side ache, but she raised her fist and shoved an artless wall at the phantom rounding the corner five feet from Aria. Its gears squeaked as it went down.

Aria grinned, a quick flash of teeth, just shaky enough to remind Nyreen of a different injury—a brief flash of fear, gone so quick she’d never been sure it was genuine.

"There's my girl," Aria purred. “Took you long enough.”

Nyreen hadn’t performed at her best in the mines; even she knew that. But Aria couldn’t understand why the adjutants had crawled so deep under Nyreen’s skin. That was the fundamental difference between them, she thought: Aria had never cared about anyone enough to be disturbed by their transformation into a monster. Aria had lain bare and vulnerable, sleeping, but she would never have done so if she hadn’t been sure—absolutely certain—that the woman beside her wasn’t firmly under her control. She only trusted that power to those who would never use it. Her walls never truly came down; it was just a show, smoke and mirrors, and whatever lay beyond was out of Nyreen’s reach.

And Nyreen didn’t care. Believing in those lies had carried her through the worst years of her life and out to the other side. She could let them carry her a little longer, just until she returned to her people and reminded herself that she was _someone_ without Aria.

“I’m not your girl,” she sniped back—but playfully, all the venom gone.

Aria crushed another mech with her biotics and laughed. Nyreen watched the column of her throat, the curve of her lips. _Just a little longer,_ she told herself, pushing to her feet.

* * *

Aria stands alone in the gutted cave of Afterlife, watching the indicator light on her omnitool pulse in time with her too-fast heartbeat.

She should delete it. There is no room for sentimentality on Omega; Nyreen has proven that for the last time.

Her fingers hesitate, but before she can stop them, they open the vid. Nyreen appears in the air before her. For the first time in years, Aria looks her fill: the intricate, bold patterns of her tattoos, the bright golden glimmer of her eyes.

"Aria," Nyreen begins.

Aria swallows. The lump in her throat is from anger; the saltwater pricking her eyes is from the smoke still lingering in Afterlife; the way her clenched fist trembles just reflects her outrage. She does not grieve.

"I don't think I'm going to survive your assault on Omega," she goes on. "The statistics just aren't in our favor. You're too destructive. I know you'll cut me down if I get in your way, so I'm playing along, but we both know I'm the one who makes the sacrifices." Her mandibles flex, a poor attempt at a smile Aria once knew so well. "I'm the Alpha now, Ari, and I would die to protect Omega. It took a while, but I found my purpose." Gunfire pops in the background of the recording; Nyreen's eyes shift sideways, narrowing, assessing the threat. "Thanks for that. And if I don't make it…"

She hesitates. Aria can see the words locked behind her teeth. They never said them, not once, and it's years too late now. Her throat constricts, the scent of dead adjutants locking it up. Her nails press into her own palm, tight enough to draw blood.

"Take care of Omega," Nyreen says at last. "She has potential."

Her omnitool goes dark. Afterlife rumbles around her, a flicker of broken lights and groaning metal. She says nothing, for there is no one to hear her, and her throat aches too much to form a single syllable. She remembers, though: skin like burnished metal beneath her fingertips, the flash of a turian grin between mandibles, a shield bright and firm and without shame.

At last, she chuckles; the sound comes out raw. "Find peace in the embrace of the goddess, little pyjak," she says, a stiff murmur. "I'll take it from here."


End file.
